HP DeskJet 970CXi
Price: AU$759
Distributor: Hewlett-Packard Australia
Ph: 03 9272 2895; Fax: 03 9898 7831
www.hp.com.au
As previously mentioned, we have tested the 970Cxi before and we took the opportunity with this revisit to see what your extra AU$360 buys over the 930C.
Visually the two printers are nearly identical. The most obvious difference is that while the 930C's paper tray has been designed to fold, the 970Cxi's does not. The 970Cxi's fixed paper tray, while functionally similar, is a more refined beast than the 600 and 800 series printers and while the paper thickness is pegged at a maximum of 200gsm, the input tray capacity has been increased by 50 percent to 150 A4 sheets.
The duplexer is a standard accessory with the 970Cxi and is one of the most elegant yet simple solutions we have seen. The duplexer is attached to the printer by removing the rear access hatch and clipping the unit in place. A series of electrical contacts help the printer identify that the unit is attached and the mechanism is driven by a series of gears that are driven off the 970Cxi's paper feed motor. When paper is placed into the printer's input tray it follows a -U"-shaped path up to the print heads and in the process the pager is flipped over, the duplexer does not interfere with this action. To print on the reverse side, the page is simply reverse fed into the duplexing unit where it is flipped over as it passes through a second U. How simple is that?
Internally there are also some improvements to the 970Cxi over the 930C. For a start the former has a faster printing action and the monthly duty cycle has increased from 2000 pages to an impressive 5000 pages. HP also claims the 970Cxi's high-resolution colour mode is 2400 x 1200dpi.
As previously mentioned, the 970Cxi utilises the same cartridges as the 930C and while the cartridge life results were quite similar a lot of the variation may be attributable to manufacturing variations for the cartridges. The 970Cxi managed 720 black pages at 5 percent coverage and 253 colour pages at 15 percent coverage. Obviously the cost per page is also similar to the 930C at 9 cents per black page and a slightly cheaper 28 cents per colour page.
In Draft mode, which produces quite acceptable output (though the occasional slight misregistration halfway down a line of text can be annoying), the 970Cxi is almost a page per minute faster than the 930C with a peak of 6.8ppmâ€"only the Lexmark Z52 was quicker and then only by 0.1ppm.
In our complex document test, the 970Cxi was fourth quickest overall at 1.18ppm. And, at this output speed, the text quality was superb with sharp well-defined fonts, rich black area fills and very sharp and colourful graphics, all on plain paper. The Epson printers may be quicker in this test but then they are printing at a lower resolution. Even at 720dpi, where the Epson printers are much slower, the output quality still lagged behind the HP. The Lexmark range of printers did produce more impressive text, barely, but the 970Cxi's graphical finesse on plain paper was superior.
What about HP's claim of 2400 x 1200dpi in photo quality printing? The output quality was marginally better than the 930C with finer dither patterns, courtesy of the finer dots presumably. The colours on the high-definition inkjet paper was a tad overblown but of course this can be corrected by tweaking the printer driver. Yes, the output quality is certainly very impressive but then so was the output from the Epson printers and a couple of the Canon's, notably the incredible 8200. Output times for the print were very impressive at 0.21ppm.
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Thats really good printer,These would be useful in the work place who are using printers.Like in the office. This may be a big help to make their work easier. Thanks for sharing this information. Have a good to all of you.
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